FLOORED Now on the cusp of its 50th anniversary, KBAC Flooring has supplied and installed flooring for thousands of residential premises in South Africa and beyond its borders
Interior flooring supplier and installer KBAC Flooring will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of operations next year with three new key executive appointments.
Brandon Park has been appointed KBAC’s new CEO, Ashleigh Keefer as its new CFO, and Etienne Louw as the new MD.
Park joined the company in 2000 as a sales representative and, as his experience grew, focused more on the exclusive brand offerings within the business and called on the architectural and design community to grow this specialised side of the company.
He also spent time on the contractual side of the business to develop a holistic view of sales and operations. In 2006, he was appointed to the KBAC board and – as part of the group’s long-term succession plan – has been extensively mentored over the past year by his father Graham Park, the outgoing CEO.
Keefer joined the company in 2005 as bookkeeper and later became accountant prior to her appointment as the KBAC group financial manager in August 2014.
In 2016, she became an alternative director and, in 2017, was appointed to the KBAC board as director and CFO.
Keefer, too, has received extensive tuition from outgoing CFO Neil Duncan, to prepare her for the important part she now plays in the company’s finances.
Louw, the newly appointed MD of KBAC Flooring, joined Cape Town’s Albert Carpets as financial manager almost 19 years ago. Louw was appointed to the Albert Carpets management team in 2000; acquired a shareholding in the company a year later; and was invited to join the KBAC executive committee in 2010, when the merger between KBAC and Albert Carpets took place. He became a director of KBAC in 2014.
Now at the forefront of flooring in South Africa, the company was established on April 1, 1969, when Graham Park was part of the team that first opened the doors of Kevin Bates Flooring, a small shop at 128 Marshall street, in Johannesburg. Kevin Bates, who led the founding team, retired from the business some years ago and passed away last year.
Despite growing pains, the fledgling company quickly managed to secure landmark flooring contracts for massive projects, such as the Carlton Centre, State-owned utility Eskom’s Megawatt Park headquarters in Sunninghill, and the thousands of houses built by the likes of Schachat Cullum and Wimpey Homes in the 1970s and the 1980s.
Currently, the KBAC Floor Group operates from Linbro Business Park, in Johannesburg, and Roeland street, in Cape Town, and has supplied and installed flooring for dozens of acclaimed corporate headquarters as well as thousands of residential premises in South Africa and beyond its borders.
KBAC holds distribution rights for some of the world’s most popular flooring brands.
The company is a member of leading national representative body in the building and construction industry Master Builders Association (MBA) North as well as MBA Western Cape, and a founding member of industry representative the Flooring Industry Training Association.
The current board consists of Brandon Park, Keefer, Louw, Graham Park, Duncan, Richard Craddock and Shane de Beer.